NEW YORK -- Mary Bacon, a pioneer for female jockeys who had been battling cancer, died Saturday in a Fort Worth, Texas, hospital of gunshot wounds, apparently the result of a suicide. She was 43.

Bacon, who changed her name to Mary Anderson after marrying jockey agent Jeff Anderson, rode regularly in New York in the early and mid-1970s.

Bacon rode the last of her 286 winners on Sept. 8, 1990, at Bandera Downs in Texas. Due to her deteriorating health, she had to stop riding.